Reading for a Coup

Several readers have asked about who I’m reading on Substack or elsewhere who’s writing with smarts about Trump 2.0. So I'm sharing my go-to 'stacks and other voices and invite you to share yours.

Russian samizdat art, curated by Rimma Gerolovina and Valeriy Gerlovin.

LACE, Los Angeles, June 9-August 11, 1984.

Day 16 of le coup….

Substack is full of excellent journalists documenting every minute of this coup. I decided to share a sample of my go-to reading on this platform because a number of people have recently asked me what they might read to be more informed on a given topic, and who I’m reading. I also recognize that it can be helpful for others to understand the lens through which I’m reporting on the resistance. There are so many excellent writers here. My list just scratches the surface and I’m sure I’ve missed some faves. Feel free to share your go-to ‘stacks with me, too, with a line about why you recommend them. I appreciate expanding my view.

For starters, there are the progressive political newsrooms and platforms with groups of established journos including Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo, The Bulwark with its newsletter The Morning Shot Shot by Bill Kristol, San Stein, Benjamin Parker and others. I read Judd Legum’s Popular Information, The Unpopulist, Talking Points Memo, and the newcomer platform The Contrarian. I read Scott Dworkin’s report The Dworkin Report, and Robert Reich, and the Drop News Site, the new ‘stack by Ryan Grim and the ex-Intercept crew, and Thom Hartmann’s The Hartmann Report, and Austin Kocher, and Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles. Among others.

For context, Heather Cox Richardson provides a progressive historic perspective on daily-unfolding political events at her newsletter. And I read Mary Trump’s The Good In Us which provides her feisty, outraged views on her uncle and the psychological roots of his political pathology. I also read plurbius, linked to the plurbius community, with writers Jeryl Bier, Sukyal Nyazov and Fergus Hodgson, focused on news related to illiberalism.

I also appreciate Qasim Rashid’s solid Let’s Address This with Qasim.

On the autocracy front, I regularly read Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Lucid, and autocracy historian Timothy Snyder’s Thinking About newsletter. I also track Anne Applebaum, Jeff Sharlet and Katherine Stewart— and (off Substack) Ann Nelson — among top investigative journalist-authors with deep expertise and field reporting experience who have been monitoring the Christian right and many of the actors in the coup for years. Queer activist Scot Nakagawa has also been focusing on lefty anti-autocracy organizing in his The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook. (

On Project 2025-focused newsletters, and those like us mapping its connections to Trump 2.0, I read our colleague Andra Watkins, who keeps digging into its Christian nationalist soul at For Such A Time as This, and Chills, by Lauren Wolfe.

On the current Coup: I just discovered the terrific Crises Notes (or Notes on the Crises) by Nathan Tankus, who is covering the Trump -Musk takeover of our Treasury — highly recommended to all right now.

On the LGBTQ+ front, I read Erin in the Morning daily, an excellent report on transgender issues by journalist Erin Reed. At The Signorile Report, veteran journo Mike Signorile does a great job covering the LGBTQ+ movement. I read Fabrice Houdert for his eye on the global corporate and policy LGBTQ+ world. They’re all very good.

On the legal front, Joyce Vance does a great daily legal overview at Civil Discourse; so does Chris Greidner at Law Dork, and Tristan Snell at his newsletter. All covering the coup.

On the feminist front, Jessica Valenti continues to cover abortion thoroughly at Abortion, Every Day. I read Jess Piper’s The View from Rural Missouri and Hot Feminism: Letters from South Carolina for views outside the New York-Cali coasts. And The Audacity, a lit and culture letter, not directly hard politics, but I appreciate Roxane Gay’s sharp editorial eye. I look for talented writers of color, which I find there and then read those other ‘stacks. I also read Jessie Daniels newsletter which examines white supremacy and racism and its intersections with gender.

On Russia, I read Olga Lautman’s Unmasking Russia. She recently launched a Tyranny Tracker to measure the weekly yardstick of the coup. I also read other perspectives, including Trump whistleblower Alexander Vindman’s Why It Matters, and never-Trumper Rick Wilson’s Substack

For positive reads and to see who is talking hope in hard times, I read The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz. And I read actual literature and look at art, because that is my personal balm. Too many to name there.

The word samizdat translates as ‘we publish ourselves.’ Most Russian samizdat was typed with four to eight carbon copies, producing tens of thousands of frail, easily-smudged, onionskin sheets. They were used to inform the world about the terrors of Stalin’s camps and against decades of tyranny.

For editorial ‘toon perspectives on the coup, I smile at Ann Talnaes’ Open Windows, Clay Jones Claytoonz, Nick Anderson’s page, and Marc Murphy’s Murphy’s Law, among. The ‘toons also provide levity in this historically extraordinary and politically very dark moment.

Finally, I scan a gamut of right-wing and white Christian nationalist voices in order to know what the other side is thinking and feeling, and to see emerging fractures. I know more about why lost men have embraced early patriarchal Christendom than I want to know. I feel it’s important to keep my eye on what they are thinking and how they view the coup.

For example, I was a bit surprised to see big voices are unhappy about the Trump-Jared Kushner proposal to mass-deport the surviving Palestinians from Gaza to build a mega resort. I thought that since they and others are Christian Zionists (like newly-approved Cabinet members Pam Bondi and Pete Hegseth and Elise Stefanik, who told Senators at her nominee hearing that Israel also has a ‘biblical right’ to the West Bank), they would be all-in for ethnic cleansing. (Kushner and Trump want to develop the West Bank, too). I won’t name these arch-right writers and thinkers, all male so far, ‘cuz I don’t want to increase their readership. (If you really want to know, drop a comment and I’ll share names with you.)

So, that’s my Substack tranche.

And, not that you’re asking, but others have also asked about other press, so I’ll reply. Yes, I do still read the mainstream press, but don’t watch TV apart from special events, and I limit my radio to streaming programs, and I limit my podcasts, though so many are great. I just prefer to read than to hear or watch my news. So I read MSNBC Daily, and appreciated Steve Benen’s reporting throughout 2024, for The Rachel Maddow Show, and its newsletter often takes me to Rachel herself, who remains so skilled and funny in her political takedowns and exposes. I also read her MSNBC colleague, Joy-Ann Reid’s Substack. I can only imagine how they feel about Musk’s desire to buy MSNBC to try to bury their voices and others. (Good luck with that Elon. Even if you did, they’ll find other primetime channels to expose your megalomania….)

I rely on Politico and The Guardian and Axios – all excellent daily news sources. The Atlantic has led the pack on Project 2025 narrative reporting, along with Mother Jones (thank you David Corn) and The New Republic (thank you writers Melissa Gira Grant, Nina Burleigh especially on feminist takes of the coup). Look back at the last January special issue of The Atlantic on Project 2025 for a yardstick of the unfolding coup – and the voices you might follow now. An excellent issue.

I also read The Economist because economics reflects policy and politics, and I read the conservative Wall Street Journal because the big corporate money sided with Trump, and, as a result, the WSJ staff often get insider scoops about Trumpland before others do. I periodically check Business Insider because a sharp progressive friend is overseeing investigative reports there. As much as I remain totally critical and opposed to unfettered capitalism, it’s our world, so I’d rather engage, at least by being informed.

And yes, I read the New York Times, but with a far more critical eye than ever. The awful reporting on Israel and the student protests here last year really solidified that for me; their bias against the Palestinian cause was so overt, even after they got called out to fix it. I am happy my pal Masha Gessen is sharing their views on autocracy and Putin and their first-person trans opinion pieces there. Then they censored Paul Krugman, not even a lefty voice. Oy. Still, a lot of great journos at The Times, even if more top brass are tilting harder right.

When I want a solid very left view, I’ll dip into Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, a colleague from my years-ago Pacific Radio days, and cohost Juan Gonzales. I read the The Intercept for excellent investigative reporting of stories ignored by others. I selectively read The Nation, which I used to write for in the 90s and aughts; I’m glad our ACT UP pal Gregg Gonsalves is writing about global public health and politics there. I also watch or listen to the wonderful cable and satellite streaming shows by friends and longtime indie journos. I appreciate the progressive movement-building discussion on Laura Flanders and Friends.

I especially like reading the foreign press, and, with my eye on the autocrats, I regularly scour Atlatzo and V-Square, who are keeping the best European critical eye on Viktor Orbán and the right-wing populists and parties of his Make Europe Great Again bloc at the EU. The friends of Donald, as I think of them. And lately, I’m searching for sharp reporters in Latin and South America, with my eye on Millei in Argentina (I plan a visit there soon) and Salvador, where hardline leader Nayib Bukele just offered Marco Rubio use of a torture facility that passes as a prison to hold the worst of deportees. (Will they also imprison people who just overstayed their visas, and other crimes? Be afraid. We should expect they could.)

So feel free to share very sharp minds in Argentina and Salvador and broadly Latin America with me. And tyvm in advance. All of these voices and views inform my own lens, as I look at the unfolding coup and school myself on the lessons in fighting autocracy, culling from our US social movement history and those of countries abroad.

Personally, I always keep in mind what the other side is thinking and especially feeling. I pay attention to the grievances of MAGAland. I don’t dismiss them; quite the contrary. It’s fueling a coup, so it’s my business to understand what hurts in MAGAland or modern early Christendom. I do that because people in my family voted for Trump, and neighbors and friends, and many people I’d never suspect. They aren’t horrible people. They aren’t seeing the America they want. And America has to be a place for all of us.

As a reporter, I also do that as a deliberate exercise, to gain insight. I ask myself what, if anything, may be legitimate in what the other side has to say, and their concerns. For example, there is a lot that was wasteful in our government, and problematic about our porous borders and many progressives had called that out for years. The response does not call for a gutting of every agency and the workforce. It certainly does not call for Elon Musk and his young DOGE bros to hack our financial system to install his AI programs and his buddy Peter Thiel’s Palantir surveillance technology so they can now essentially own the technology that controls our government systems and can profit handsomely. Some people are calling what Musk and Co. are doing tech war, a crypto-fascist coup. It is.

I hope the mainstream press catches up to the AI agenda. It’s too late to stop the mass theft of our data and the insertion of hard-to-track-or-remove AI codes into the government system. But the more we report on it, the more we’ll understand the scope of this takeover and attack and what’s newly at stake for our country. The attack is continuing. They’re inserting AI into the nuclear and first strike codes -- everything. It’s a global attack too, of course; these are global raiders. Musk has his eyes on space and satellites and even more power to control our collective future. AI is the weapon and the avenue for power and massive wealth.

So that means I need to understand the problem better, too. I remain an OG luddite, but we all have to step up, to become more skilled in our resistance. Toward that goal, I’ve started looking for Substack writers who are focused on AI and cyberwar and national security, while I educate myself about our banking system via Crises Notes.

So that’s moi.

The Culture of Resistance: Czech samizdat publications, film, and music of the 70s and 80s

And now, a closer note. Right now, on day 16 of the coup, we are operating with a free press. But I’ve also got my eye on our future, and looming attacks on the free press. If Project 2025 has their way, and new DOJ hatchet man, acting Attorney General Emil Bove, goes after pesky journos they view as too woke, and if conservative activist L. Brent Bozell, newly named CEO for the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) moves to purge liberal voices from Radio Free Europe and other government-funded entities, and Brendan Carr, a Project 2025 author and now head of the FCC, shuts down PBS and NPR (as Project 2025, and Trump and Musk are excited to do, what will we be facing? An embattled American media. Intensified censorship. We’ll likely see an explosion of new voices on all the alternative channels, including Substack, which, of course, includes many far-right voices, too.

We may even see a burgeoning of a new American underground media, our version of Russian samizdat, a new generation of underground literature and journalism. I’m already looking for it, realizing it is already happening in different shapes behind encrypted doors online. The emails of Treasury department whistleblowers being leaked to reporters are just a starting point for what is to come…the FBI order to reveal FBI agent identities and emails…the blacklists and planned McCarthyite investigations of MAGA enemies…. As the coup advances, so does repression, so does resistance. Seat belts, everyone.